Forward Placement
Today we started our lesson by vocalizing - making sure that both girls were nice and warmed up so that they didn't hurt or strain their vocal chords. We worked on a little bit of vocal technique with a quick lesson on our forward placement! Lily was so awesome at showing Chloe exactly how to sing our warm ups to maximize their effectiveness - and did so great at showing Chloe the ropes of how our voice lessons go!
Chloe picked it up so quickly! It was so great! And It was awesome to remind Lily of the basics - and of why we do what we do when singing!
We worked on brighting the sound of both girls by having them push the sound through their teeth (and slightly through a talked place in their voices), and further worked on adding this forward placement to both low and high notes to help them hit them with more accuracy (better pitch), making them easier to control, and taking out any muffled tones that come when adding harmonies sometimes. The brightness cleared up the harmonies even more and the girls sounded SO great!!
Freeing up higher and lower notes
We then moved to choosing a key that was comfortable for both girls - one that they both not only felt was in each of their vocal ranges, but that highlighted the strongest, prettiest parts of both voices! Chloe was used to singing our song in "E", and Lily had been practicing the song in "C", and then changed to "E" when her and Chloe sang together.
In the key of "E" - Lily was worried about hitting some of the high notes.
In the key of "C" - Chloe was worried about hitting some of the low notes.
After warming the girls up and hearing where their "money range" was - we decided to start 1/2 step lower than what they had practiced together - moving the song to "Eb".
Making sure that Lily maintained her forward placement so that her high notes were clear and easy (adding in our Pinocchio placement to add power), and teaching Chloe how to approach her low notes so that they didn't fall back into her throat - but that they came forward - freed up a whole new range for both of these girls!!
Feeling how awesome that 1/2 step down was - we moved the song one more 1/2 step to "D" - making sure to maintain the placements we had practiced (and promising the girls that i would warm them up so they would feel confident hitting the notes).
"D" allowed Lily to show off a more comfortable high note range, adding more power without hurting her voice, and gave her more confidence in the individual pitches of the song as she had one less thing to worry about.
"D" also put the song in a better place for Chloe's high and low notes, putting them in a place that was well within her range, making them sound bright!
And the mix of the girls together was a much smoother, comfortable sound as well! Wow. They really did so great!
Performance rituals
We've been working hard getting Lily into a patterned, repeatable performance ritual to create as much familiarity in her performance as possible - even when nervous, when it's windy, when the microphone is at a different level - we want to remove as many variables as possible.
Today we added Chloe as well! So our goal was to make sure both girls were on the same page - working together to create a sense of security between the two of them. We decided that with both girls, our performance ritual would mirror the one that Lily had worked on by herself, and that they would adjust it based on how many microphones were available at the performance.
This ritual was:
1. Deep breath walking out
2. One girl Blow Pitch Pipe
3. Both Hum pitch for 1/2 second (making sure they heard it correctly)
4. "oh" pitch for 1/2 second
5. One girl count "1,2,3"
6. Start song
We also worked on the girls' harmonies and a little bit of stage presence!
Both girls were so awesome! I'm glad we had an extra lesson to help Lily feel more prepared and ready to go!!!
She CRUSHED!!!